Do something about long slug-fests (shields + resistances)

Post subject: Do something about long slug-fests (shields + resistances)

Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2012 9:47 am

Specialist

Joined: Fri Nov 23, 2012 6:20 amPosts: 21

The worst kind of game is the one where you and the other guy have similar builds, differing only in (for example) which Drone you bring.

This tends to happen around level 35-40.

If I have the Fire drone, and the other guy has the Electric drone, and we both have Electric resistance, but he doesn't have fire resistance, my drone will do around 15 damage per turn while his drone does 5.

Over a long match, this makes a huge difference. I have won countless matches against higher-level players by exploiting this kind of small, turn-to-turn differential.

(There are other ways that it can happen, too. If you both have the Yelloworm (amazing weapon btw), you can have a long-range stand-off where each player can move into range, attack once, and then get pushed the next round by the other player's Yelloworm. If one player has the Physical Resistance mod, but the other player doesn't, the difference of 10 per turn will gradually build to a victory for the guy with the resistance.)

In these games, one Repair Kit will give you enough HP to last for five or six rounds, and if both players are committed to winning, they'll both burn through ALL of their Repair Kits in a long, boring match.

For this reason, the first thing I do between matches is go buy more repair kits.

I hope something can be done about this, because apart from creating boring matches, it has balance-related consequences. The Rocket and Bullet-powered guns are no good at level 35+, because you'll run out of ammo and they become useless. You can't recharge them using Kits, because you need all of your Kit slots for Repair kits in order to survive the slug-fests.

Perhaps if these Bullet/Rocket guns were stronger, you would see some aggressive rush-down builds going up against the "grind-it-out-with-resistance and shields" builds, but right now that isn't happening.

My best idea for fixing this is to radically reshape what the Kits do. Right now, the ONLY kit that I ever use, and I think other competitive players above level 35 are doing the same thing, is the Repair Kit. If the Repair Kits were restricted to one per match, it would seriously change the dynamic of these slugfests.

Most importantly, it would be a natural way of buffing the Bullet and Rocket weapons, because they could be refilled using a Kit.

Since the recent patch (around 12/10) the addition of the Safe Shot has helped to mitigate this problem somewhat, as the Safe Shot and the Zoppy are both reliable long-term shooters, meaning that you can focus Physical DPS *or* Electrical DPS.

Any other Level 30+ people seen this happening? What are your ideas for how to fix it?

Limiting the kits to one-of-each would be an AWESOME solution, and it wouldn't make your slots useless because actually there are multiple, similar kits from the lower levels. If you want to have all repair, you would have to take one 145 HP kit, plus one 130 HP kit, etc. If you took four repair kits, at level 38 where the best kit is 145 HP, your fourth kit would be for only 100 HP.

I'm not sure if this is sufficient all on its own to fix the slug-fest problem, but it would be a great place to start.

By the way, there is already some precedent for this king of restriction. The Damage Resistance Modules are restricted to one-of-each-type.

ya i agree i'm at level 43 and all my battles take forever, i think mostly it's the shields slowing things down. I usually only get about 30-45 damage out my attacks, and this doesn't seem affected much by defense modules or lack there of. The game needs more action, even the battles between the updated ai opponents are slow due to the fact that the computer now uses shields. I think a better alternative would be to allow a player the choice to defend, or sidestep/dodge an attack depending on which side or top weapon is fired (left or right). The idea of having one repair kit is reasonable, some mechs have 5-6 kit slots and fighting someone with that many repair kits is just lame. The only other main problem i see is a lack of players above level 30-35. I usually get the same person 3-4 times in a row and if i won the 1st battle they just quit at the start of the next matches. I never quit a match, even if i'm losing because you still refine your strategy a little, and it doesn't have any real life consequences, come on people.

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